Sarah FackrellPersonal jurisdiction in the 7th Circuit:
In Liu v. Monthly, No. 25-02074, which will be argued today, the appellant argues that they were not subject to personal jurisdiction in the NDIL because they "did not sell or ship a single accused product to Illinois."
#CivProMatters
The plaintiff-appellant did not show on appeal.
But the #ScheduleA plaintiffs' "bar association," SAFE, filed an amicus brief.
SAFE requested--and received--permission to argue the plaintiffs' side.
SAFE argues that an offer to sell and ship products into the forum state is enough to satisfy the requirement of purposeful availment:
"Appellants were open for business in Illinois and reasonably could have foreseen their products being sold in Illinois."
Now, technically, SAFE is an amicus here. In a normal case, you might leave those pesky SCOTUS cases to the parties.
But here, SAFE has asked to argue the plaintiffs' side. And I suspect that the 7th Circuit judges will want to hear about these cases.
Looks like the defendant-appellant didn't mention Nicastro either. Am I the only person who thinks that's potentially relevant to these cases?
One more thing: SAFE relies heavily on the fact that Walmart lets its third-party sellers choose which states to ship to.
As far as I know, Amazon does not. You sell to all U.S. states or no U.S. states.
